This reminds me of an old Finnish engineering legend from the early days of Nokia. The guys had just built an important prototype of some network equipment (early GSM base stations IIRC), which was going to be demonstrated for the press. All tests and previous demos had gone fine.
But as soon as the demo for the press started, the machine crashed. The management was upset. Later, the reason was found to be some old EPROM chips that are erased using UV light, and the photographers' cameras had strong flashes that went through the tapes covering the "window" on the chip. This caused the program memory to be corrupted when a photograph was taken.
Interesting that the Finnish version of this story is about Nokia, GSM base stations and EPROM memory. The version from 1990 from The Devouring Fungus which I quoted in a separate comment is about the IBM 701 and CRT memory.
But as soon as the demo for the press started, the machine crashed. The management was upset. Later, the reason was found to be some old EPROM chips that are erased using UV light, and the photographers' cameras had strong flashes that went through the tapes covering the "window" on the chip. This caused the program memory to be corrupted when a photograph was taken.